Case study: My Healthy Food App
DESIGNING, RESEARCHING AND ITERATING OVER A MOBILE APP FROM SCRATCH, DURING THE UX GOOGLE CERTIFICATION PROGRAM.
Project Overview
As part of Google’s UX Certification Program, we were tasked with designing a mobile application. We could choose the nature of the app from a set of given options. I picked to design a recipe nutrition calculator app for a sandwich shop in Amsterdam.
I thought something like this would be useful for a restaurant because people are more and more concerned about what they are eating. Not only in terms of calories but also in terms of how processed is the food they are consuming.
My Role
Conducting User Research, paper and digital wireframing, low and high-fidelity prototyping with Figma, conducting usability studies, accounting for accessibility, and iterating on designs.
User research revealed some pain points
I conducted interviews and created empathy maps to understand users and their needs. A primary user group identified were working adults worried about the quality of the food they consume.
Research also revealed that the usual customers of the shop struggle with time and working schedules, so they value being able to get their food in a quick and hassle-free way.
Healthiness
Users don’t want to eat ultra processed foods, conservants and other unhealthy products every day.
Time
Working adults are too busy to spend time on cooking their meals.
Easiness
Users need to be able to get their daily meals with as little as possible hassle.
From paper wireframes to low-fidelity prototype
Using research findings
I decided to use an already established and known mechanism for users to learn and trust the quality of the foods. I included the EWG Food Score. So, users quickly find out how healthy their meal is without reading detailed information.
Hi-fi prototype
Takeaways
While designing this app, I learned a lot about usability and accessibility. I also discovered new cool tools that now I can use in real life. Iteration and user research were another key takeaways from the course. It was a lot of fun!